It was, he says, "like going to a bookstore and browsing through all the stacks � oh, look at this, oh, look at that! I couldn't pull myself away."

This summer, Mr. Dudley, a 53- year-old advertising consultant, has been spending weekends outside. The Web still comes in handy for checking stock quotes and news, and he used it recently to look up prices on kayaks.

But in a shift mirrored by many other Internet users, Mr. Dudley's interest in the Web is no longer driven by eclectic imagination. When he logs on now, he knows what he wants and he mostly knows where to get it.

The only thing surprising about this article is that Peter Merholz linked it as "a good piece, though [...] an overwhelming stating of the obvious". Amusingly there, the Times quoted Merholz in the article as if he's just an ordinary representative surfer guy — and then spelled his name wrong. Ha.

I'm an optimist Extropian about almost everything that really matters in the world, but I now think that professional journalism is getting worse with every passing week.